Great story if a little bit hard to follow due to number of characters. The serial killer of many prostitutes was also a charmer and very clever fellow who certainly knew how to manipulate...not only the prostitutes but the whole art and literary community as well as the cops. He posed as a reporter and rode with the cops who were working on the murders. ( )

A fascinating book which tells the true story of Jack Unterweger, the Austrian serial killer. Jack admitted to the murder he was convicted of and blamed his illegitimate birth, his unfortunate childhood and his youth. He wrote plays and novels in prison and so charmed the citizens of Vienna that he was allowed to give public readings in the prison cafeteria. With such dramatic public support, 15 years were knocked off his sentence and upon being paroled, this celebrity killed 11 more women. Then at the behest of his 18-year-old girlfriend, they became fugitives in Miami and she danced in strip clubs to support him. Women adored this man. He had no fewer than two or three girlfriends at one time. He kept detailed records of his sexual encounters, bedding over forty in an 18-month period. And most of them knew he was a convicted murderer, a sadist! As a woman, that just boggles my mind. His trial was an absolute circus. OJ had nothing on Jack. As a narcissist, Jack was so confident he would be found innocent. When the guilty verdict came in the FBI profiler told the warden to put him on a suicide watch but they didn't take the advice. And before they could even transfer him, Jack hung himself. After all his claims of innocence and his theory of a police frame-up, he used the same ligature knot on himself that he had used in all 11 murders. But I must say the most amazing thing I read was that he committed his first (known) murder on the very day of my birth! I had chill bumps all the way down to my toes. ( )

Interesting read about Austrian society and the parole of a murderer. Sentenced to life for killing a young girl, Jack Unterweger begins to write from prison and catches the attention of important people who push for his release. Upon release, prostitutes in both Graz and Vienna are murdered and police begin to connect them to the same killer. One policeman, who targeted Unterweger for another unsolved killing, refuses to give up on his case and begins to bring attention back to Jack. Connections between police agencies, including Los Angeles, ultimately bring Jack to trial. ( )

Wikipedia in English (1)

"I was a greedy, ravenous individual, determined to rise from the bottom to the top . . . It wasn't me!"--Jack Unterweger's final words to his jury

Serial killers rarely travel internationally. So in the early 1990s, when detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department began to find bodies of women strangled with their own bras, it didn't occur to them at first to make a connection with the bodies being uncovered in the woods outside of Vienna, Austria.

The LAPD waited for the killer to strike again. Meanwhile, in Austria, the police followed what few clues they had. The case intrigued many reporters, but few as keenly as Jack Unterweger, a local celebrity. He cut a striking figure, this little man in expensive white suits. His expertise on Vienna's criminal underworld was hard-earned. He had been sentenced to life in jail as a young man. But while incarcerated, he began to write--and his work earned him the glowing attention of the literary elite. The intelligentsia lobbied for his release and by 1990, Jack was free again. He continued writing, nurturing his career as a journalist. But though he now traveled in the highest circles, he had a secret life. He was killing again, and in the greatest of ironies, reporting on the very crimes he had committed.

With unprecedented access to Jack's diaries and letters, John Leake peels back the layers of deception to reveal the life and crimes of Jack Unterweger, and in unnerving detail, exposes the thrilling twists--both in the United States and Europe--that led to Jack's capture and Austria's "trial of the century."

Reveals the life and crimes of Austrian serial killer and celebrity journalist Jack Unterweger and exposes the twists in the case in both the United States and Austria that led to his capture and Austria's trial of the century.